Reserved Seating Areas

Heritage Experience

Not currently available. Join us for a food and wine pairing featuring our Heritage and Reserve wines, our extremely small-production, limited releases that you can’t taste anywhere else on the property.

Event Info

the bacchus club has its privileges.

Over 100 years ago Charles Bundschu established the Bacchus Club to gather family and friends to celebrate Rhinefarm, poetry and song―a tradition that continues today. Reflected in all Bacchus Club experiences are our family’s interests in discovery, history, culture, music and the arts, good food, laughter and, of course, great wine. And perhaps most importantly, we bottle the spirit of Rhinefarm and ship hand-crafted Gundlach Bundschu wine directly to your door.

Vintage Reserve

Heritage Selection

Sometimes there is a block, a single row of vines, or even just a few barrels that produce wines of distinctive and exceptional personality and heritage. We’ve crafted three limited bottlings that showcase the very best of our estate vineyard.

bundschu family cabernet

Our Story

For six generations and over 160 years, our family has farmed our Rhinefarm estate vineyard at the crossroads of the Sonoma Valley, Carneros and Napa Valley appellations. Today, we focus on making small lots of ultra-premium wines from this distinctive and historic property.

Helpful Information

Jim Bundschu

Jim Bundschu is the quintessential down-to-earth farmer, completely devoted to the Sonoma County vineyard land cultivated by four generations before him. Growing up on Gundlach Bundschu Winery’s Rhinefarm, he was so mesmerized by his walk through the vineyards on his way to school that he never doubted he would carry on his family’s tradition. Today he still works closely with his son, Jeff Bundschu, who serves as president.

After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture economics, Bundschu returned to the winery to undertake the most important project it had seen in decades.

Since 1933 the winery had been closed due to Prohibition, and the grapes grown at Rhinefarm were sold to other wineries. In 1969, Jim Bundschu began the four-year project of fully replanting the vineyard to premium varietal wine grapes. In 1970, Jim was named president of the resurrected Gundlach Bundschu Winery, and in 1973 the family celebrated the first crush of the new winery.

“My highest aim is to be a good farmer,” says Jim, “one who understands the subtle nuances involved in producing grapes for exceptional wines vintage after vintage, no matter what conditions Mother Nature might produce.”

Bundschu also maintains his connection with earlier generations by living in a stone house constructed in 1906 that overlooks the vineyards. When he’s not farming grapes he prefers to stay outdoors—fishing, skiing, backpacking, flying or playing baseball. If the weather keeps him inside, he finds equal pleasure in reading and playing his saxophone.